Our events, classes, and seminars bring the community together to hear, learn, and discuss the most compelling issues and ideas of our day. We hope you will join us in our community space and bookstore at 716 SE Grand Avenue, Portland, OR, online, and at partnering venues across Portland and Oregon.
Literary Arts is pleased to present Elizabeth Gilbert as the first speaker of the 2025-26 Portland Arts & Lectures series. Click here to view the full lineup. Please note: a
Learn the craft of narrative writing. Participants will learn to write perceptively – deploying their five senses and delving into feelings as they write. They will learn how to leverage narrative distance, writing between their ideas and the immediacy of their experiences to see how distance can affect the emotional weight of the work. They will learn how to use metaphors as a means of discovery, to harness verbs, and to modify sentences for focus and impact.
This six-week seminar is designed for writers interested in doing deep reads of contemporary literature from a craft perspective. We will dissect the structure and language from five very different short stories so that we can apply some of the same tools these writers use in their work to our own. Delve for Writers is an occasional series of seminars designed to help writers improve their craft through close readings of contemporary poetry and prose.
Since moving into our new permanent headquarters, a historic building turned bookstore and community space in Portland’s Central Eastside, we’ve been thinking a lot about the spaces we create and
Literary Arts is thrilled to present Timothy Snyder, bestselling author of On Tyranny. Literary Arts’ Executive Director Andrew Proctor will be in conversation with Snyder about his latest work, On Freedom at the Arlene Schnitzer
This foundational series is for personal nonfiction writers ready to shape real-life experiences into engaging stories with intention and clarity. Over four sessions, you’ll learn how to identify your memoir’s deeper message, build a strong narrative arc, and make structural choices that serve both your story and your reader.
In this class we’ll study and practice specific techniques used by established speculative fiction authors such as N.K. Jemisin and Nalo Hopkinson. We’ll examine examples of “worldbuilding in small doses” and try our hands at it. We’ll discuss the merits of creating worlds from the inside out versus going from the outside in. We’ll cover viewpoint, voice, neologisms, “found” texts, and other elements of this aspect of writing with exploratory and generative exercises.
In this six-week class we will explore prompt and nurture creative ideas to create a dossier of possibilities for further development. Participants can expect to take home 5-10 new ideas for creative works-in-progress and strategies for infusing more joy and authenticity in their writing practice.
In this four-week class, we’ll read and discuss ekphrastic poems by a wide selection of writers, creating our own definition of ekphrasis, pushing the boundaries of what an ekphrastic poem can be. We’ll engage with several essays by poets to get us asking questions and diving deeper into our craft.
In this workshop, students will learn the fundamentals of what makes an effective pitch and receive guidance, insight and support about how to navigate the pitching process.
Percival Everett appears on November 12, 2025 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall as part of the Portland Arts & Lectures series.
In this four part class, we will consider the what, why, who, and how of form: what form is, why we might choose to write in an inherited form, alter an inherited form, or write in a made-up form, and how we might go about doing so.
Colm Tóibín appears at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on January 15, 2025 as part of the Portland Arts & Lectures series.
Imani Perry appears at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on February 12, 2026, as part of the Portland Arts & Lectures series.
Patrick Radden Keefe appears at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on April 23, 2026, as part of the Portland Arts & Lectures series.
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